Gus Wisch up on a star level now as a senior receiver, return man, jet sweeper and a favorite target of accurate sophomore quarterback Hunter Boyd

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

When seasons end, athletes with remaining eligibility have what some coaches call exit interviews used to let athletes know what they expect of them in the offseason so that they can give themselves the best shot at earning playing time the following season.
Chesterton coach Mark Peterson didn’t mince words with Gus Wisch after his junior season. The coach told the receiver/return man he needed to get stronger, which in turn would make him quicker and more durable.
Wisch took those words to heart, became a fixture in strength and conditioning coach Matt Wagner’s weight room and impressed the head coach so much that Peterson during summer workouts that Peterson predicted big things from Wisch during his senior season.
Wisch put an extra 15 pounds on his 6-foot-1 frame and weighs 180 since last season, and has proven his coach’s summer prediction true. Despite missing all but the opening series of the second game of the season and the entire third game, Wisch leads the team in receiving yards (193), yards per reception (14.9) and touchdowns (two receptions, one rush), yards per carry (13 on just four rushes), and yards per kickoff return (26.5).
Playing quarterback as a sophomore in a league as strong as the DAC isn’t easy, and having such a deep stable of senior receivers has helped Hunter Boyd.
Louis Raffin (16 receptions, 11.3 yards per catch) is the longest at 6-3 and the fastest. Wisch is the shiftiest, and 6-foot, 185-pound Patrick Mochen (nine receptions, 14.1) brings speed and strength to the position. All three have reliable hands, as does 6-4, 220-pound tight end Mike Rone (15, 8.33).
Seniors have caught all but three of Boyd’s 59 completions. The lefty sophomore QB has earned the respect of his elders.
“Hunter’s gotten a lot better,” Wisch said. “Mentally, too. He seemed a lot more scared Week 1. He seems so much more comfortable in the pocket now and he has so much more time, too. I keep forgetting he’s only a sophomore.”
That’s a nice complement.
Brought along slowly in the opening couple of weeks, Boyd has shown a strong, accurate arm on deep throws since then. In the past four games, he has completed 57 percent of his passes, has thrown seven touchdown passes and one interception, and produced a number even more impressive than those over that stretch: 10.4 yards per attempt. That’s a crazy good statistic for a quarterback of any class, all the more impressive for a sophomore.
Boyd’s top receivers complement each other well.
“I think our games are almost opposite,” Wisch said of him and Raffin. “I think we both catch well, but other than that, we don’t have a lot in common as receivers. Louis is more of a straight-line kind of deep ball guy. I’m more of short routes, crossers and slants, kind of shiftier.”
They do have at least one more thing in common. They both give defenses centered on stopping Andrew Goveia hammering away up the middle something else to think about in the run game in the way of jet sweeps.
Goveia has carried the offense all season but he’s far from the team’s only playmaker on that side of the ball.
“With Louis and Gus now establishing themselves on the perimeter, people are going to have to start paying attention to not only our inside run but some of our outside run and also a lot of our perimeter pass stuff,” Peterson said.
Goveia has rushed for 704 yards behind an experienced offensive line, but the more defenses gang up on him, the more opportunities grow for Wisch and the rest of the playmakers increasingly making their presence felt during their senior seasons.
The Trojans (4-2 overall, 3-1 in the DAC) will test their playmaking ability tonight at home vs. Lake Central (2-4, 1-3).